Friday, 24 April 2015

Assignment 3 - Proposal

Production name, precise duration, overview content and target audience:
For this production I am going to create a documentary around the issue of domestic abuse. Using facts and shock tactics to create a dramatic feel when watching. For the purpose of this video I would like to raise awareness as well as try and give out information from different charities and websites, showing an audience that there are people that want to help and who can give them advice and them with the situation that they are in. I don’t have a main age range for this documentary but I believe that it will be targeted towards men due to the video showing that men are not always the abuser.

My production will be called ‘D.A.H’. I will be using initials of ‘Domestic abuse help’ due to my research of the different websites having options to hide and get rid of any evidence that they have been looking at domestic abuse help online, which I would like to carry on into my production. I would like to have my documentary to last around 1 to 2 minutes to make sure that I have included all the information I believe will benefit an audience watching and to capture a realistic and dramatic story. I would like to include one main story of a man who is affected by domestic abuse, using voice-overs and action sections to create a dramatic effect for an audience. 

Issues that will be covered:
With this documentary I will be covering the main issue of how domestic abuse effects Men and try and raise awareness on how to get in contact or find help. Showing a reversed message within the beginning of my video to show how many think the man is the abuser; finishing off with the unexpected seen of the man as the victim. 

Resources and equipment:
I am going to be using a SLR camera from school (Acland Burghley) I will be filming in and around this school in lesson times during the week, I will also be using my peers in my Media class to act and speak in my documentary. Because I will be using the school and I am hiring the equipment I will not need to pay for anything in their production. For props and makeup I will be using my own makeup and props for my production so I do not need to buy or purchase anything.

Interviews and cast and crew:

Because I am showing how a man is effected by domestic abuse using mostly visuals. I will not need any voice overs to explain the story. I believe this will have a bigger impact with an audience, because of the fast visuals I will be using.  I will be doing this within my Media group using my peers to help act out the situations and I will be focusing on the main camera angles and techniques trying to capture the best footage for my documentary.

Here is my production schedule, which I will be following when starting the filming and editing section of my piece. 


Week
1
Tasks
Completed?
Monday

 I am going to start off with the filming of different objects in a house hold filming my actress and her reactions .

Tuesday

I will then start taking pictures of my actress for the start of my video, taking individual pictures and put them together to create a stop motion piece, change of her face will be shown in this stop motion.

Wednesday

  I will then start with the voice over part of my piece, recording my actresses voice to say over the main production piece.

Friday

I will then start filming the main story part, showing how and why her partner abused her. Filming different angles at one of my locations.





Week
2
Tasks
Completed?
Monday

I will then start editing all my footage that I have collected looking into what I have already collected.  I wild then go out and see if there is anything that I could re film when looking at the house hold part of the production.

Tuesday

Most of my final footage planning will be for the extra footage I need to film to add in and change certain footage I have all ready collected.

Wednesday

  For these last few days I will be putting together all my footage together in premier pro, cutting and re positioning the footage to make it look realistic and effective for my purpose.

Friday

  Editing and finishing my final edit of my production.







Thursday, 23 April 2015

Assignment 2 - (Part 2) Whats my idea? - Ethical considerations

For my final idea I decided to use the issue of Domestic violence that I believe will work well when going into my production stage.

I started looking into social and ethical issues for my production. When thinking about the ethnical issues I have to make sure that I don’t offend anyone due to my decisions on certain aspects of my domestic violence video. When filming I have to make sure that I don't hurt anyone who is onset via the action that are taking place to cause a dramatic feel to this production, making certain that all cast and crew are kept safe during the production stage. If I do come in contact with some one experiencing domestic violence and I would like to share or contribute this story I should keep him or her secret when sharing their story in my production. With social issues I would try and avoid with this production is trying to keep viewers happy; I am creating a vey sensitive subject that is touching to viewers watching. To respect my audience I will try and be effective with the use of shock tactics but still be respectful the issue and the people that are involved.

When doing my secondary research on this issue I found a few help centers around the area for the local community, for more information I could use these to my advantage and ask questions and get information about what they do to help men and women. 

During my research I have not seen many posters or campaigns showing a man as the victim of domestic abuse. To  challenge myself and to subvert from the normal expected domestic violence videos, I will be using a man as  the victim of my video, showing a women as the abuser, suggesting to an audience that its not always what it seems and men are effected as well as women.   



Tuesday, 21 April 2015

Assignment 2 - Whats my idea?

Assignment 2 - What’s my idea?



Here is a mind map of my ideas that I might want to make into my final production piece of my documentary.
The main 3 that I have looked into with more detail are:
- Domestic abuse
- Drugs
- Homeless people
For all three of these topics I looked and researched existing campaigns that try and cover this section. I would like to take these subjects and show how thy effect young peoples lives, this is because I am a young person myself meaning i can relate and research with more understanding and detail the topics I would like to look into.

Secondary research on Domestic abuse: 
Here is a website that I have found that helps and goes information an advice about your relationship that involves domestic abuse, It also gives many different help lines and locations for you to attend. Many websites that I have seen and looked at have many quick exit buttons 'Hide this site' showing how these sites are carful trying to be helpful and discreet for people who enter this site.







Looking into the facts and figures, over a quarter of a million phone calls have been made to different domestic abuse hotlines like 'Women's Aid' which are open 24 hours. Many charities and support units have made and created many campaigns and videos addressing and raising awareness to domestic abuse using a shock tactic of different women with scars and bruises sharing personal stories that are shown in the videos. Most are distributed on 'YouTube' and 'Vimeo' but are not shown on the main domestic abuse website to make it discreet as possible.

http://www.nhs.uk/livewell/abuse/pages/domestic-violence-help.aspx
Here is a piece of information from the NHS choices website about the statistics and what is calcified as domestic abuse. 
One woman in four (and one man in six) in the UK will be a victim of domestic violence during their lifetime, according to research estimates. A current or former male partner kills two women a week.

Domestic violence is officially classified as 'and incident of threading behavior, violence or abuse between adults whoa re or have been in a relationship together, or between family members, regardless of gender or sexuality'.

We think domestic violence as hitting, slapping and beating, but can also include emotional abuse as well as forced marriage and so- called 'honor crimes'

Its abuse if your partner or a family member:

- Threatens you
- Shoves of pushes you
- Makes you fear for your physical safety
- Puts you down, or attempts to undermine your self- esteem
- Controls you, for example by stopping you seeing your friends and family
- Is jealous and possessive, such as being suspicious of your friendships and conversations
- Frightens you



http://www.hopeuk.org
Secondary research on Drugs: 
With this option I would like to focus on the effect that drugs have on young people, I have been researching different charities and support groups that help young people choose the right path when it comes to drugs.

Here is one of the biggest charities in the UK that help out and educate young people about drug use and drugs in general.

'Hope' have their own YouTube channel and official website used and made for young people. They have shared videos of young people that have gone through a bad experience with drugs and their journey of becoming clean with the help of 'Hope UK'.

Course and meeting groups are run by this charity 'Hope UK’ to teach and advise young people on drugs and how it effect everyday life, which you can see details to on their website.

Here are a few statistics from 2009/10 from the Hope UK website on young people and drug abuse;
- Young people aged between 16-24 reported the highest levels of drug use in 2009/10
- It is estimated that about 2.7 million young people in England and wales have used an illicit drug at some point in their lives, 1.3 million used drugs in the previous year.
- It is estimated that 16.4% of 16-24 year olds had used a class A drug at least once in their lifetime.
- It is estimated that 40.7% of 16-24 year olds have used one or more illicit drugs in their lifetime and 11.6% in the last mouth.
- in 2009/10 22.3% of 16-19 year olds reported illicit drug use. 

Feedback given to Hope from young people who have been involved have been positive and successful in educating young people about the rights and wrong with drugs. 

http://www.homelesslondon.org/portalhl/UserAction.do?method=welcome
Secondary research on Homeless people
When researching different sites and statistics for Homeless people, which is on of my options. I came across many different sites and advise services across the internet that help all homeless people in general. 

I have come across a BBC documentary on 'Britain's homeless family's' sharing the struggle that this working class family with children have gone through when they became homeless. 


In this documentary it shows families in Britain that are becoming homeless for various different reasons and how they are living now, and what they think should be done about this growing number of homeless families.  

Also when looking through the different homeless helplines many sites gave different help and advise,options to look for accommodation and other living arrangements in the UK. Homeless London is one of these websites I have been looking at when researching, who also give the advice and have different options to take for your situation.
Online there are many different videos, documentary and campaigns about the Homeless community in London today, as well as on Vimeo and other online stations.

There were also statistics on the website 'Crisis' another charity giving statistics go Homeless people in London today.
- Government statistics show 2,714 people slept rough in England on any one night during 2014 - A 55 per cent rise on 2010.
- Local agencies report 6,508 people slept rough in London alone throughout 201/14 - A 77 per cent rise on 2010 (This has more than doubled over six years) 
- 111,960 households applied to their local authority for homelessness assistance in 2013/14, a 26 per cent rise since 2009/10
- Just over 52,000 were accepted as a homeless and in 'priority need' - A 31 per cent rise since 2009/10                                                              



Qualitative research
When looking into my three ideas through my research phase I scheduled a focus group meeting with my other Media students to talk about my ideas and how I can take them forward and also thinking about what things could cause a few challengers when filming. I put together a few point of the meeting notes that I got from my focus group.

Domestic violence
- looking at the videos that you and we have researched it looks like you could be creative and dramatic in the production stage of this piece.
- Could be hard to come up with a story line that is believable to an audience watching, without it being too over the top.
- There are many websites to help with the facts with domestic violence, which is useful for your production stage.
- You could do both global and community change with this idea.
- Many charities that you could include and talk about when in the production stage.

Drugs
- Easy to do a storyline because of a lot of Media coverage with this issue already.
- Easy to understand how and what young people take because of the age that we are.
- Many websites to include due to many found in your research
- Can also be creative with this issue in the production stage of the work.

Homelessness 
-Could be hard to try and film this if you were trying to be real and effective when in production stage.
- Good issue to talk about because it affects many people in London.
- Creating a story line of main theme could be hard if you want it to come across as realistic.
- Hard to film people who are homeless, trying to get their permission will be difficult.

Quantitative and Primary research
For this part of my research I decided to create a survey for people I know to answer, asking questions that will benefit me and my research that will lead to a better understanding when in my production stage. When looking through the results that I received from my survey I collected helpful information that helped sculpted my production to be useful and engaging when watching. 

The questions that I asked in my survey are:
-Do you know anyone that has been affected by domestic abuse?
-Do you know any charities or major websites for people who are experiencing domestic abuse?
-Would you use any of these websites for domestic abuse if you were involved in some sort of abuse at home?
-Do you think that having videos to raise awareness that are shown on YouTube and Vimeo is a good way of trying to stop Domestic abuse? 
-If you knew someone who was part of a domestic abuse relationship would you help him or her giving him or her advice?

With these questions I wasted to see how much people knew about domestic violence and the charities that provide help for certain types of abuse. As seen in my presentation for my pitch most did not know much about the different charities. Because of this I would like to raise awareness and show the different charities that help this abuse in my production using mostly visual images to create  a dramatic feel to my production. I also wanted to find out how people took in different styles of domestic videos, if using text and stories is more effective then just showing images, helping me decide on what way i would like my production to take.

When having a final look into my primary research, I tried to see what are they most effective ways to raise awareness witch will catch the attention of young men and women that I'm reaching out to. Allowing the process to get help to be more easy and effective.